Short Abstract:

The paper will deal with an ethnographic description of the views of about 90 young women activists who are members of an international women's movement for social justice. Their views on social crises in their countries will be given, together with their perceptions on capabilities that are available in their home context.

Long Abstract:

The author will present research material collected during three different action-oriented summer schools, held during July 2023 and February and July 2024, with young women in a Women’s Movement for Social Justice. These young women live and work in about 15 different countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, but also in Europe and Asia. They apply to attend the summer schools, which are presented both in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and in Kleinmond, South Africa. The author is a member of the facilitation team, together with Prof Yvonne Sliep, University of KwaZulu/Natal. The theme of the summer school course, Creating communities with heart, was chosen by Prof Christa Anbeek, leader of the facilitation team. The course rests on the philosophical insight that real transformation is often preceded by disruption. Personal disruption is explored and reflected on, but this presentation will mainly deal with the participants’ perception of larger-scale social disruption in their communities and countries. We shall also attempt to make links between personal and social disruptions in the lives of the participants.

Presentation

The socio-cultural disruption experienced and perceived by the participants will be presented in a mapping exercise which will also show the prioritization of disruptions by the participants. Each priority area of disruption will be reviewed in terms of general data, context and ethnographic content. The contextualization will be linked to broad socio-political parameters, and the participants’ views about the root causes of the disruptions will be discussed. The mapping will also enable the presenters to analyse local-global connections in the social disruptions that are discussed.

During the summer schools participants are asked to link areas of social disruption, such as violence against women, to an analysis of capability deprivation among those involved. (This theme featured very strongly in the 2023 summer school). This analysis will be presented in some detail. Capabilities are seen as both social opportunity sets and personal capabilities, therefore beings and doings. These concepts are discussed in depth during the summer schools, with emphasis on how being and self-reflection prepares for and complements doing and action.

By September the three groups of summer school participants will have been taken through a group process that strengthens agency, commitment and skills. After each summer school the young women have to establish a small scale project or event where they can address a problem they had identified in a planned, collective way. During this phase we emphasise elements of their own agency and commitment, and use a framework for the analysis of agency that was formulated by Conradie (2014). This framework, partially based on the work of Martin, Sugarman and Hickinbottom (2010) and on Self-Determination Theory (Chirkov, Ryan and Sheldon, 2011), will use the following agency and commitment parameters for a joint exploration with the student:

• Reflective judgement; understanding, of self and others

• Motivation and will; internal locus of control

• Pursuit of goals in organized action

• Personal autonomy

• Relatedness

• Competence – the application of knowledge and skills in an authentic way

The intervention will be theoretically framed by the use of agency in the capability approach. For some of the participants we shall be able to assess how they actually used agency, while for others we shall only be able to refer to how they intend to use it, as we shall not have received reports on their work by the time the conference takes place. The entire intervention will be done within a relational ontology (Owens, Entwistle, Craven and Conradie, 2021).

Summary

By combining the Capability Approach and the framework devised by Anbeek (2024, forthcoming), we shall endeavor to reflect the social disruption perceptions and experiences of between 80 and 90 young women from different parts of the globe. We shall also show how they assessed capabilities and how some of them had used agency to engage with these problems in a small way.

Bibliography

Anbeek, Christa, 2024 (forthcoming). Embracing vulnerability. In search of communities with a heart. Nijmegen: Radboud University Press.

Chirkov, V, Sheldon, K., and Ryan, R. 2011. Introduction: the struggle for happiness and autonomy in cultural and personal contexts: an overview. In: V. Chirkov, R. Ryan and K. Sheldon. (eds.) Human autonomy in cross-cultural context. Dordrecht: Springer.

Conradie, Ina, 2014. Aspirations and capabilities: the design and analysis of an action research project in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. PhD thesis, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Martin, J., Sugarman, J., Hickinbottom, S. 2010. Persons, understanding psychological selfhood and agency. New York: Springer.

Norton, L & Sliep, Y, 2018. A critical reflexive model: working with life stories in health promotion education. In: South African Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 32/3:45-63.

Owens, J, Entwistle, V, Craven, L, & Conradie, I. (2021). Understanding and investigating relationality in the Capability Approach. Journal of social Behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12310